It’s a fact that we are living in what I call the ‘Age of Consolidation’, the ‘sharing economy’ as it’s coined by others. And the tourism industry is not immune. The airline, car rental, travel services and hospitality industries have undergone massive consolidation over the last few years. The Marriott acquisition of Starwood (at a fine $12 billion), car rental companies being swallowed up, airlines being bought up one after another and online travel portals joining forces. Mergers and acquisitions aplenty. The obvious reasoning: companies must show growth. Share price and size of portfolio matters. While some choose to buy growth, the other alternative has been for companies to take the long road and show growth organically, picking up opportunities in promising regions, as we at BON have done.

I remember the days when we hoteliers had the luxury of daydreaming of ways to delight our guests, conjuring up new ideas, even improving things that seemed to be working. Worrying about spoiling, delighting and pampering our guests was the central concern of every decision we made. Ahhh, the luxury....

Nowadays it seems that our general managers and management teams are spending their hotel management moments worrying about cash flow, stressing over budgets, agonizing over revenue: in short, money.

We promote our properties as 3-star hotels with 4-star facilities and 5-star service.

While this might sound fallacious, it is actually founded in truth. Travelling abroad will make any South African hotel guest realise that our ‘3-star’ market boxes way above its weight. Most of our BON Hotels are in the 3-star bracket, and in most cases, we can confidently argue that they are more than 3-star quality and would qualify as such with the grading council. For many reasons moving out of the 3-star bracket would be a faux pas, so we are happy to stay right where we are.

My recent blog on the best hotel I’ve ever stayed at got me thinking of the contrary. What is the WORST hotel I have ever stayed at? Travelling and being in the hotel industry conjures up all sorts of both good and bad hotel memories, but I have to say, after careful thought and application of my measuring tool – how did the hotel make me feel? – I must admit to generalisation and claim that my worst hotel in the world is, in fact, a particular hotel category.